A Lazy Drive - Through Four Forests...

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A cousin and his wife have come down to India for holidays and wanted to go for a short trip with us. We had suggested Nagarhole and they agreed. So we booked a homestay at Kutta, a small village just after Nagarhole for one night. Our cousins arrived from Chennai on Wednesday night around 9:15 pm. We had dinner and went to bed around 11:30 pm.

Got up next morning around 4 am and were off by 5:30 am. Had breakfast at Café Coorg, a decent place and proceeded to drive through the Nagarhole forest. I took very few pictures this trip as I was doing the driving and we were short of time.

After reaching the homestay, we stashed our baggage and left for Irrupu Falls. On the way we had lunch at a place called Café Robusta.

The road to Irrupu Falls is very bad. Climbing up to the falls was a uphill task for me. Realized how out of condition I was. My wife and I vowed to start exercising from this week. There was very little water in the falls.

Turned right at the ring road before entering Mysore. There was a rough stretch at the beginning. After reaching Hunsur we turned left next to a petrol bunk to Nagarhole. We had the GPS on. But the route was quite straight forward.

Breakfast at cafe coorg at Hunsur

Lazy Drive - literally it is. Where the drive is more important than the destination. Actually these drives have no destination or timeline that is important. We just drive around slowly enjoying the nature.

Thanks autosafari. Sadly I took very few pictures this time. I missed a lot of photo opportunities. So I will also be posting some taken by my cousin with his P&S.

Quote:

Originally Posted by autosafari

That's it.

Thats the way I too like drives to be.

Glad to know you agree. Most cars were zooming past us in the forest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppU

Excellent Pictures HR,

All are wallpaper stuff. Waiting for more pics

Thanks AppU.

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A hanging bridge on the way to the falls…

Way down from the falls…

After the falls we went to Tolpetty (waynad) wildlife safari. Cost us 980 rs for four of us inclusive of the jeep hire. It was a back breaking one hour drive. We saw a lot of deer, a bison with its young one, an elephant far away and some wild boars.

The safari path…

A stag…

An Eagle…well camouflaged… took a long time for me to spot it, in spite of five persons pointing to it…

The next morning, we started out early and were at the Nagarhole forest checkpost by 5:55 am. It was pitch dark and there was nobody there. So we just sat in the car and waited. At around 6:05 we saw some light flashes. It was the forest guard with a flash light and a register. We entered the details in the register and went into the forest. It was eerie to say the least.

As we drove slowly through the pitch dark forest we could see the eyes of the deer glowing. We drove till 7 am and by then it day light. We then turned around and headed back. We again saw hordes of deer, giant squirrels, wild boars, and one elephant crossing the road in front of us. It was in a hurry and soon disappeared into the thickets. We returned back to the homestay had breakfast.

We saw a lot of birds... like this one for instance…

Deer…

More Deer…

Deer crossing…

Wildboars….

A giant squirrel hanging upside down and eating some small fruit…

A nice pose...

We had stopped by this deer and it just stood and stared at us for more than 5 minutes till it was distracted by another car…

After breakfast, we took the Tholpetty forest route to Kuruva Deep. On the way we saw a Bison crossing the road. We stopped to see if any more were going to cross. But no such luck. So we continued and entered the Begur forest range. We reached Kuruva Deep. But then our cousin was not interested to see the island as it involved some amount of walking. So we left without crossing over.

Now we had to take the route through the other side of Nagarhole forest, (Kabini River), to reach Mysore. Since we wanted to have some Kerala food for lunch, we decided to take the longer route through Sulthan Bathery, Muthanga forest and Bandipur.

We stopped by Jubilee restaurant in Sulthan Bathery for lunch. The food there was good. And then we started off through the forest route.

After we entered Bandipur, we saw a mother elephant and her calf by the side of the road. We stopped there as we thought they would sooner or later cross the road. We wanted to see the crossing. As we were waiting, lots of vehicles passed by. Some even slowed down, thinking we were scared to drive by, and told us told us that it was safe to proceed. We waited patiently for around 15 minutes watching those two and at the same time clicking.

Initially the mother elephant looked at us for some time. Then the young one attempted to cross the road slowly. It walked slowly till the middle of the road and then turned towards us. I was a bit worried – if the calf walks towards us, then the mother might also follow and I would have to reverse the car. But then, the calf returned back to the mother.

Later, the calf made the second attempt to cross the road. It walked slowly across and once it had crossed the road, it ran off into the bush. Now, it was the mother’s turn. It slowly walked across the road and a truck comes from the opposite direction blaring his air horn. The mother took its time crossing the road and joined the calf.

Our million dollar question is how the mother elephant communicate to the calf about crossing the road... as we know that there was not physical prompting. Maybe by sound that we didn’t hear?

We tracked the elephants till they were out of sight and then started on our way.

We saw 2 more adult elephants in the bush later and were tracking it for about a kilometer to see if they would also cross the road. But then they were moving parallel to the road all the way and showed no sign of coming close to the road. So we continued on our way.

We finally reached Mysore and reached Bangalore by 8:15 pm. We had dinner at our place and dropped our cousins at the boarding point for their return trip to Chennai.